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With NASA turmoil and clearly unable to plan beyond the next presidential election, after all it seem every president likes to come in and shake things up at NASA may be it time for us Europeans to look for more reliable partners, why do not we ask the Chinese, Indians and Japanese if they want to contribute to these missions.

Depressing that the budgets for our largest space experiments (it being the next frontier beside the deep-sea trenches) are a pathetic drop in the ocean compared to the money we're happy to throw at bailing out the greedy ungrateful banks... £1billion for the WHOLE EU is ridiculously small change compared to the money the UK alone has just agreed to 'lend' (yea right) Portugal. And that can be blamed on bailing out various banks of one kind or another.

Simple: Dumps the Yanks because how many times will ESA have to be disappointed over how many decades before it realises that they cant be trusted to deliver on anything more than day after yesterday.
The obvious choice is to knock on the door of the Chinese... With Chinese funding and lower cost production of craft/launchers etc, the Jupiter project LaPlace - which let's face it, is the MOST interesting to the general public of the three currently being considered could Not only be a orbiter but a few landers on both water bearing moons with submersible's to explore under the ice layers. And it could all be ready to launch with the Chinese within 2 to 3 years but if we wait for the Yanks you yank us around it would be 20 to 30 years before even a basic orbiter could be launched. The next voyage to Jupiter and Saturn should include the subsurface landers/submersibles or it is a waste of a launch...

I think I'm with the majority here. The American space effort, after a great start in the 1960's and 70's, has become a top-heavy under-achieving mess. Any plan made with the Americans is only good until the next presidential election or round of pork-barrel politics.

On the other hand going in with China could, in my opinion, be a mistake. The Chinese attitude to space seems (from my limited reading of it) to be entirely military in orientation, focused on knocking out US satellites and enabling targeting of carrier battle-groups when their conflict inevitably moves from the current economic economic to a military one.

Europe's great strength in space is that although it receives a healthy dose of government funding and guidance, private enterprise rather than the state has a far greater role than the US or Chinese space programmes. What is missing (although more cash is always nice, of course) is engagement with the wider population. So whatever Europe does next in space, I believe it should do it alone, and it should be less pure science in orientation and more calculated to inspire the public, which will help deliver the funding for pure science at a later stage.

Afraid have to throw some cold water over Europe going it alone in Space Exploration. At least in the outer system.

The Chinese do not a very long track record of Interplanetary exploration. Neither do they currently or in the near future have the means to get there.

The Russians have not launch any Interplanetary probes since the fall of the Soviets. They are out of practice.

The only one with rockets capable of reaching the outer system with a heavy payload and decent delta V is the US. They have the high energy Centaur upper stage. Plus the deep space tracking network to link with distant probes.

Think there is going to be a slow down of space missions until the global economy is more robust and the missions are make less expensive to mounted. There can not be any more JWST type of gloated budget overrun and miss deadlines measure in years.

Why do brilliant scientists find it hard to raise money? It's the same problem as the arts: government funding drives away benefactors and causes resentment amongst taxpayers. Time to find a different funding model. A few hundred wealthy benefactors could easily cover the cost of one of these missions.

I am very interested in space exploration and cosmology but it would be hypocritical to say that they should be funded by the taxpayer but the arts shouldn't. Other people may have different priorities but they are not stupid. It's our money: let us decide how to spend it. I would happily donate to a mission I felt worthwhile but I resent every penny spent without my approval. There is no pubic consultation, no democracy, therefore no sympathy if they all get axed.

I do not see sense in jeapordising the current missions because if their capability is shortened then that will result in a higher long term expendature. We would have to send another project to space to fill the gaps left by the new, cheaper, smaller projects. That will mean the price paid for the same original vision will skyrocket.

So, scrap all three missions and put all that money into Skylon. With cheaper means of getting satalites in space the long term benefits could be huge.

But then again, I am biased towards Skylon.

I don't know much about Skylon but I agree with The Realist that the money should be spent on reducing the cost of getting things into space. There is a clear public interest there which justifies some taxpayer support.

The current situation is quite farcical. ESA have a billion to spend but haven't decided which project to support. Clearly they think it is OK to scrap two of them. Why not all three?

Why can't we just have 1 international organisation that co-ordinates a collective human strategy towards space technology?

Unfortunately for all those suggesting China (for what reason I'm not sure) the Chinese simply don't have the deep space experience and equipment. It's true that China has some good thinkers but so far only the West and Russia could do it. Also depending on what's finally decided there could be security issues.

Why does China come up? China has financial bottomless pockets and if presented with an idea, no matter how big or grand or large, it actually gets built in a fraction of the time the west would take to do the same. If the Chinese do not have the right technical person, this is a global market and all they have to do is advertise the position and pay the wage and space scientists will flock there... :)

In reference to Michael: China definitely doesn't have 'bottomless pockets' any more than the U.S does. China's economy might be large, but then again so is the combined economy of the E.U.
Secondly since China doesn't have the long experience the West and Russia do it would take a very long time for them to get to design and manufacture (it's telling that China still gets its most advanced weapons and systems from Russia). You can't just throw money at a question and expect it to get solved.
Lastly scientists don't simply move from nation to nation. There are reasons why excellent researchers from all over the world prefer to go to America and Europe to work. The pay is higher in the West, better resources, less chance of political interference and far greater access to advanced facilities. That might be starting to change in Brazil, India, Singapore, South Korea and China but it's still largely a Western dominated market.

Initially the European Southern Observatory’s next Extremely Large Telescope was going to be a 100m telescope, and then they went to 42m and now it may be just 30m. We’ll be doing the same.

Just to set the record straight here, ESO originally looked at a conceptual design for a telescope (rather cutely codenamed "OWL" for the OverWhelmingly Large Telescope), but concluded that it was technologically not possible (not that it was not affordable), so did not pursue it. It then looked at a design for a 42-metre telescope, which it was concluded could be built. A recent review raised concern that there might not be a large enough budget to cover credible cost over-runs (not that it wasn't currently affordable), and so they are now looking at creating the necessary contingency by reducing the size of the telescope to 39 metres (not 30 metres). So, not really the same.

Scrap all three, and beat the Yanks to Mars. While they're crawling there via the ISS and the Moon, and having to reinvent the technology at every step, we could adapt the "Mars Direct" mission profile to use SpaceX's Falcon-Heavy hardware to have a long-term manned mission on the surface of Mars within ten years.

All three have the potential to revolutionise human understanding of nature and all three should be pursued. The cost for all three is pocket change for the EU and could easily payback for itself many times over from resulting technological advances. It is fundamental science like these three missions that advance us the most as a species, I find it very disheartening that they are paid so little attention.

14. At 18:35pm 9th Apr 2011, Kiteman wrote:
Scrap all three, and beat the Yanks to Mars. While they're crawling there via the ISS and the Moon, and having to reinvent the technology at every step, we could adapt the "Mars Direct" mission profile to use SpaceX's Falcon-Heavy hardware to have a long-term manned mission on the surface of Mars within ten years.


I like your plan, brave, bald, revolutionary, would give a real kick to space exploration.

An that exactly the reason why it will not happen, sadily.
Falcon heavy, and what will probably be announce in the next 2-3 years Super Heavy launch vehicles have the potential to allow for fairly cheap missions to mars, if the mission are plan with off the shelf technologies I cannot see it costing more than 5 billion, but with the current structure of many space agencies aimed more for job creation rather exploring the cosmos it just not gonna happne.

why congress still mandating Nasa to create a shuttle replacement and why Europe feel the need to reinvent the ATV is a complete mystery to me and it a absolute wast of resources and money which could be better spent on other projects.

These are temporary set-backs. The exciting but currently disruptive news on this side of the pond is that commercial spacecraft and launch services are being spurred by NASA's CCDev program, fielding commercial capsules and lifting body spacecraft to provide crew transport services to LEO. NASA is getting out of the LEO transport business. Although disruptive in the sort term, this will ultimately lower costs to LEO access, spur incredible commercial space innovation and relevant to this article, free up NASA to focus more of it's expertise on BEO HSF and more involvement with the worthy efforts lists in this article.

I think we should prepare to live on the moon, so we should be doing projects there first, and the rest of the projects mentioned can be done better from the moon as a base